“Yeah. And they all said, ‘Y’allah, get over it,” came the response.

I giggled along with Auntie Siham, not because I thought it was funny, but because I didn’t want to make Nadia feel bad for a below-the-belt crack. I helped Auntie open the wine bottle, then carried it and two glasses on a tray into Nadia’s small room. She was watching Days of Our Lives.

She smiled up at me from her nest in the maroon comforter. Her brown hair, streaked with golden highlights, was tied up in a sloppy bun on top of her head, and her dark eyeliner was smudged. She shifted to the side, grimacing, to make room for me on the foot of the bed. “Remember when me, you, Hanan, and Reema used to watch this every day and our moms would come in and turn it off?”

“And tell us that these American shows were filth and would ruin us.”

“Didn’t they? Weren’t we all waiting for a Bo Brady who liked to eat malfouf and smoke narghile and sweep us off our feet?” Her face looked more serious than her playful voice, and I had no response for her. She pointed to my neck and asked, “Why are you still wearing that?”

I tucked the crucifix back in my blouse.

“I wish it had worked out for you,” she said after a while, running her finger up and down the chilled glass, interrupting the beads of sweat as they made little tracks down its side.

“I tried really hard …”

“I know, Aliyah. But does it really matter? We’re different, and that’s it. They tell us we’re not Americans and, sure, we listen to the music and drink the coffee.” She yawned. “We’re just different, and that’s OK.”

“But I want to be more than that,” I insisted. “That summer, I fit in. I really liked it there, Nadia, for the first time.”

She just looked at me sadly and pushed her glass away, wincing as her leg bumped the small table beside the bed. Her face transformed from looking pained to looking furious. “Damnit!”

“You OK?”

“I never should have gotten into that car with George,” she snapped.

She didn’t mean it, I knew. George was deeply in love with her, and the shelf above her bed was stuffed with little plush toys and cards from him. One teddy bear dressed as a nurse was cradled in the arms of a koala bear, who held a heart-shaped, plastic balloon in one hand: “Get Well Soon.”

“He’s a great guy, Nadia.”

She didn’t reply, just stared stonily at the television.

“What’s wrong?”

“My ass is falling asleep from sitting in this bed all day. I’ll go back to work in a month, but still—I need physical therapy and … there’s just so much that’s gone wrong.”

“Don’t shut him out, Nadia. It wasn’t his fault.”

“Yes, it was!” she blurted, her face flushing a bright red. “He wasn’t watching the road—he turned to talk to Hanan and John. What would my mother have done, without me? My father’s already gone—what would she have done?”